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October 6, 2017 Subscribe to our weekly Idaho email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters CapitalPress.com 11 Idaho Food service pros tour potato harvest By JOHN O’CONNELL Capital Press Sean Ellis/Capital Press A farmworker picks chardon- nay wine grapes in a field near Caldwell, Idaho, on Sept. 28. Idaho’s 2017 wine grape harvest will be significantly reduced due to damage caused by a bitter January cold snap. 2017 wine grape crop hit by frost By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press CALDWELL, Idaho — Idaho’s wine grape crop will be significantly reduced this year due to severe damage caused by a bitter January cold snap. But 2016 was a bumper year for wine grape produc- tion in Idaho and that will help lessen the impact, vint- ners and vineyard owners told Capital Press. Wine grape harvest in this area recently kicked off and growers are expecting mark- edly reduced overall tonnage. Dale Jeffers, manager of Skyline Vineyards, said the low temperature reached mi- nus 26.9 degrees in his vine- yards near Nampa on Jan. 7 and it reached minus 24.5 and minus 21 the two days before that. Other growers reported low temperatures of between minus 20 and minus 23 on those days. The result was a massive reduction in this year’s wine grape crop in southwestern Idaho, where most of the state’s wine grapes are grown. Jeffers, who has been farming in the area for 30 years, said, “I certainly don’t remember anything colder than that. It’s pretty devastat- ing.” He said he will end up har- vesting only about 54 of the 470 acres of wine grapes he has in production. Temperatures reached minus 20 degrees near vine- yards owned by Williamson Orchards and Vineyards in Caldwell, said manager Mike Williamson. “Our harvest is way, way down,” he said. “I’d say we will not be picking about 95 percent of our crop this year.” Winemaker Martin Fu- jishin, who owns Fujishin Family Cellars in Caldwell, started picking wine grapes Sept. 27. “We still don’t know what the full impact is going to be but I can tell the crop is quite a bit lighter,” he said. “We’re probably looking at about 40 to 50 percent of a normal crop.” Fujishin was more fortu- nate than some other vintners in the area in that he sources many of his grapes from older, higher-elevation vineyards, which “actually weathered through pretty well compared with the lower-elevation vine- yards,” he said. Huston Vineyards own- er Gregg Alger said he will harvest about 15 tons of wine grapes this year, down from the normal 120 tons. But he said last year’s large crop will help lessen the pain. “We were blessed with the 2016 harvest being so beauti- ful,” he said. “A lot of folks last year had to find extra tanks and barrels. They had a little extra that can carry them through this year.” The blanket of snow on the ground that reached two to three feet deep for an ex- tended period helped insulate some of the vines. PINGREE, Idaho — Twice each week, Egan Click, with Sysco Corp. in Chicago, inspects 100,000-pound rail loads of Idaho potatoes to make certain they meet cus- tomers’ size and quality spec- ifications. But Click acknowledges that prior to participating in an Idaho Potato Commis- sion-sponsored harvest tour, he didn’t fully appreciate the “unbelievable” process Idaho growers, packers and shippers follow to meet the standards associated with their state’s seal. Click was among the 28 professionals within the grow- ing food service category IPC included in a Sept. 26-29 tour. Participants representing ma- jor potato markets such as Illinois, California, Texas and New York toured potato har- vest, a fresh packing opera- tion, a dehydrated potato plant and a frozen potato processing plant. “My director wanted me to get a better sense of knowing what I’m looking for,” said Click, who vowed to have more empathy when he encounters future spud defects. Don Odiorne, IPC’s vice president of food service, said the food service professionals head home with photographs and stories about Idaho po- tato production to share with their staffs and may become “brand advocates.” “They are telling us, ‘We need to be able to respond to our customers when they have questions about pota- toes,’ so this is a real good way to build loyalty among those who are buying Idaho potatoes and paying a premi- um for them,” Odiorne said. During the past year, the volume of U.S. potatoes sold by the food service sector — comprising food consumed outside the home — sur- passed retail for the first time, Odiorne said. After leading the IPC group on a tour of his com- pany’s fresh packing facility in Pingree, Kevin Stanger, with Wada Farms, said more homes have two working parents, and there are fewer traditional households, where families routinely dine on home-cooked meals. “It isn’t a huge shift, but it’s a continual shift of people who don’t have time to cook at home,” Stanger said. Odiorne believes con- sumers are also demanding a broader variety of creative and ethnic foods that would often be too challenging, costly and time consuming to prepare at home. To reach the food service sector, Odiorne said IPC ad- vertises in food service pub- lications and sends a calendar featuring creative potato ideas by top chefs to 50,000 chefs each year. Tour participant Maryanne Dinardo, a manager serving the Lake Erie area with U.S. Foods, said her company plans to organize an Idaho potato harvest promotion, including information about Idaho products on its litera- ture and offering discounted rates on products to its cus- tomers. “Idaho is still king,” add- ed Scott Mealwitz, produce manager with Sysco Cleve- land. “That’s what most of our customers want.” IPC spends under $2,500 per domestic participant on its tours, and will invite food bloggers to visit Idaho next fall. A couple of weeks ago, Odiorne said IPC hosted in- ternational buyers from the Pacific Rim on a similar tour, which has already resulted in a large purchase of dehydrat- ed spuds by one of the partic- ipants. Food service professionals tour Wada Farms in Pingree, Idaho on Sept. 27 during a tour sponsored by the Idaho Potato Commission. John O’Connell/Capital Press 40-1/102 40-1/102
